United States / 04-04-2017

From swastikas to microagressions: The new antisemitism on campus

Born in the last two decades, many college-aged
Jews have little experience with violent acts of antisemitism in their daily
lives.

But since January, there have been over 100 bomb
threats called into Jewish Community Centers and day schools, and at least
three Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized. The incidents have suddenly made antisemitism
a reality for them.

For early 20-somethings, the bomb threats and
vandalism are unlike anything they’ve seen in their lives. "Never
again" is a post-Holocaust refrain taught in Sunday schools and synagogues
to convey the horror of Nazi death camps and the anxiety over threats to Jewish
existence. But many, particularly those raised in heavily Jewish areas, say the
overt antisemitism across the country has been unsettling and caused them to
think about what it means to be Jewish on a college campus, and in the United
States.

“I wouldn’t say I was skeptical of antisemitism,
but I grew up in Jewish day school and they’d always drop it in there now and
then,” said Jonah Kasdan, a freshman at Johns Hopkins University. “I grew up in
a Jewish community, everyone around me was Jewish and I never saw it, so I was
like ‘Oh, whatever.’ So it’s been kind of weird to see, ‘Oh, wait that actually
does exist.’”

“It’s just been so much more prevalent that you
can’t help but notice,” Kasdan said of the uptick in violence against his
community.

Kasdan described his campus as generally free of
political controversy, but noted that Hopkins has an active chapter of Students
for Justice in Palestine. In conversations with McClatchy, many Jewish students
cited the organization as a contributing factor to anti-Jewish and anti-Israel
sentiment on their campuses.

SJP describes itself as working for “freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinian
people,” and counts one of its “points of unity” as “ending Israel’s occupation
and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the wall.” It has chapters
on nearly 200 campuses across the country and is also responsible for driving
much of the BDS movement, which seeks to boycott, divest and sanction Israel
for its treatment of the Palestinians.

As a part of “Israel Apartheid Week” last month, members of the group painted a campus statue of Johns
Hopkins’ blue jay mascot with a Palestinian flag and the words “End Israeli
Apartheid.” One of Kasdan’s friends painted over it, an action SJP called “a
microaggression geared towards silencing any criticism of the Israeli settler
state.”

The Anti-Defamation League confirms anecdotal evidence of SJP’s increasing profile on campuses,
calling it the “primary organizer of anti-Israel events on U.S. college
campuses and the group most responsible for bringing divestment resolutions to
votes in front of student governments.” A study of 100 U.S. colleges with the
largest Jewish populations conducted by AMCHA, an organization that combats antisemitism
on campus, found a “strong correlation”
between the presence of groups like SJP and overall antisemitic activity.

“Certainly we know that efforts to delegitimize
Israel on campus have created tension that has led at times to a rise in antisemitic
activity,” said Matt Berger, spokesperson for Hillel International, the largest
Jewish campus organization in the world.

ADL’s last annual report found that antisemitic incidents on campus nearly doubled from
2014 to 2015. There were 90 reports at 60 colleges, which include graffiti
involving swastikas, slurs against Jews and references to the Holocaust. In the first half of 2016,
there were 100 more incidents than during the same period the prior year.

An incident doesn’t need to take place on campus
to rattle students. When a Jewish cemetery was vandalized near the campus of
Washington University in St. Louis in February, it was sophomore Peri
Feldstein’s first direct experience with antisemitism.

“It’s a little freaky,” said Feldstein, a
sophomore at Washington University. “It’s one thing to hear about JCC bomb
threats across the country and to see a cop car in the back of Hillel, general
safety and protection — you know Jewish organizations have to look out for
themselves — but to have an attack happen against the Jewish community just
like three minutes away from where I live and study was really bizarre and a
little discomforting.”

Washington University has a robust Jewish life
on campus — around 30 percent of the student body is Jewish — so Feldstein said
the response to the cemetery incident was overwhelming. Students raised money
to rebuild and carpooled to the site to help clean up the approximately 150
headstones that were overturned.

“I’m used to talking about antisemitism as an
undertone as opposed to an overt action,” Feldstein said. “It definitely
reminded me that there are people who not only have antisemitic thoughts, but
take real action.”

Jonah Yesowitz has never felt unsafe or targeted
at the College of William and Mary, a Virginia state school with a small Jewish
population. The class president and a member of Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon
Pi describes the antisemitism he encounters on campus as subtle.

“There’s a lot of little stuff that occurs on
campus. For every swastika, there’s a million little conversations that go on
that are much more harmful than that. Everyone can get behind, ‘Alright,
there’s a swastika. That’s ridiculous, that’s not OK,’” said Yesowitz, a
sophomore. “But for the little conversations that are more political in nature
people just assume that it’s OK to say, ‘Well, you’re a Zionist, so I don’t
like you,’ and that’s part of our culture.”

While no suspects have been arrested in any of
the cemetery incidents, Jews around the world were shocked by an arrest for the
JCC bomb threats in the U.S. and several other countries: an Israeli Jew who
also holds American citizenship. Michael Kaydar, who was arrested by Israeli
police on March 23, is described as having “a very serious medical condition”
that could have contributed to his actions.

Leah Grynsztein, a junior at Florida
International University in Miami, said she’s concerned people will use the
fact that a Jew may have been responsible for all the bomb threats as reason to
dismiss any real threat to Jewish communities.

“It’s unsettling, but at the same time, it’s one
person. I don’t think it speaks for all of us,” Grynsztein said. “It gives
people the ability — not that it’s right — but it gives them the ability to
say, ‘A Jew is doing it as well, so where’s your argument?’”

Ken Waltzer, former director of Jewish studies
at Michigan State University, said the level of active antisemitism is higher
now than at any point previously in his career. Now executive director of the
Academic Engagement Network, Waltzer organizes college faculty against BDS and antisemitism
on campus, training them to work with students and oppose movements against
Israel.

Waltzer said the antisemitism Jewish students
confront today on campus “is not the antisemitism of the Nazi period,” but a
more modernized threat.

“They don’t feel so much physically threatened
as they feel personally wounded when these kinds of things happen. It calls
into question who they are and what they think they are and how other people
view them,” Waltzer said.

Feldstein, who grew up in a family that was
actively pro-Israel, said her campus experience has led her to be more
thoughtful about policy towards the Jewish state and how she interprets antisemitism.

“I have learned to ask questions and to think
about what was said before viscerally reacting and being like ‘AHHHH, antisemitic!’”
Feldstein said. “Now that I’m growing up, I’m learning to think more for myself
and take the pieces that I agree with and think critically.”